Behind the Scenes: Cablato

Hear the startups participating in Collider’s first Startup Booster Programme. We’re taking you behind the scenes.

Who are you and what do you do?

Cablato is redefining digital media by bringing hyper-personalised creative to programmatic advertising. Our programmatic-creative ad-serving platform is the first of its kind to combine leading-edge data management and cross device, dynamic ad serving. The result is an exceptional personalised customer experience throughout the customer journey, with every individual receiving a uniquely personalised ad in less than 5 milliseconds. Convenience and simplicity forms the basis of our proprietary technology. Built in the cloud, our platform simplifies creating and managing personalised advertising campaigns across any device, at scale, accelerating results up to 10 times. Our data platform is the easiest and most compliant way for advertisers to on-board customer, enterprise, first and third party data for digital advertising. Our integrated recommendation engine analyses multiple data sources, deciding on the perfect combination of creative, price, offer and CTA for each consumer in under a second. Integrated with major mobile and web ad trading platforms (DSPs), Cablato enables advertisers to gain all the benefits of personalised advertising while still retaining full control of campaigns and media spend using their existing technologies. Not surprisingly, Cablato is quickly gaining traction with campaigns going live for major advertisers in the USA, Europe, Asia and Australasia and partnership agreements being set up with Oracle and Acxiom.

Who are your co-founders & give us one line about each of you.

Adrian Pearmund is a digital business specialist with in depth knowledge in Programmatic Advertising, Data, Technology, Digital Media and Mobile Alex Vernikov is Cablato’s CTO, technology architect and chief engineer.

Where in the world are you from and what drew you to London?

Adrian is from London and Alex is from Amsterdam. Outside of the US, London is the hub for media, data and programmatic and offers the biggest market opportunity.

What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?

London is a vibrant, exciting city. Being in London, we’re fortunate to be at the centre of media and tech innovation, have access to great talent and global clients.

Explain why your company is a MadTech company, and how you plan to disrupt the larger ecosystem.

Cablato is at the forefront of media technology and innovation. We are the industry's first true programmatic-creative ad-serving platform that combines leading edge data management and cross device ad-serving to deliver exceptional personalised customer experiences throughout the buyer journey. The platform enables brands and agencies to seamlessly on-board and use data for creative personalisation and optimisation, generate dynamic ads based on both owned and purchased data, including customer CRM, enterprise data such as pricing and availability, third party data, contextual data and behavioural data – in real-time. By connecting and actioning multiple data sources in realtime, accuracy and relevancy of creative is improved whilst ad-serving latency is keep to a minimal. This is not going to be possible in set-ups which connect independent data sources and ad-servers, where latency could be issue, learning feedback loops don’t exist and sets-ups are manual, complex and require manual optimisation. Cablato will also pass back segment IDs to the DSP assisting with optimisation and performance, another unique feature. Typical ad serving and dynamic content features are covered by standard in the platform, but it’s our ability to use broad historical and real-time data for personalisation, combined with the capabilities of our platform that we believe makes Cablato unbeaten.

What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?

As with all new technology, it can be complex to explain simply, especially to individuals outside of the media and programmatic media industries. As the concept of programmatic creative has gained more traction, this challenge has become easier

Tell us about where you think Collider can add the most value to you over the next four months

Collider has an unparalleled reputation for supporting and accelerating the growth and advertising technologies companies. Being part of the Collider family, we look forward to gaining business support, access to prospective clients and investors.

What advice would you give to founders who are applying to Collider

Clarify your business proposition, it’s value, the need in the market and opportunity. Work on your financial model, understand SaaS business models, MRR etc. Get some traction Persevere!

Behind the scenes: ConnectID

Hear the startups participating in Collider’s first Startup Booster Programme. We’re taking you behind the scenes.

Who are you and what do you do?

ConnectID are a London based start up tackling the age-old problem of maintaining up to date contact details for the people you know. You’re really busy right? Yet you’re still responsible for maintaining everyone else's details. Contacts are scattered everywhere and people change jobs, numbers and addresses all the time. Everyone’s address book, therefore, quickly gets out of date.

The 15th Century business card to exchange contact details still has its place but ultimately it doesn’t stay up to date. Everyone stores contact details in their smartphone, yet still in todays digital age it quickly gets outdated, we think that’s not very smart.

We have developed an app with patented technology for both people and businesses to access, share and automatically update contact details for people who store their address book in their smartphone. The app is supported by a dashboard for organisations, which enables them to send messages direct to their members mobile devices.

Who are your co-founders & give us one line about each of you.

Tassos Papantoniou is a successful Yacht Broker by trade and believes the business card has its place but contacts need to be redesigned for our fast paced and dynamic lives.

Allison Wightman is a modern marketer of all things digital who has worked in the corporate world all her life before successfully jumping ship to a start up.

Where in the world are you from and what drew you to London?

Tassos the company founder studied in America, UK and Greece, however, London has been his home since he studied at Cass Business School.

Allison was born in Birmingham and then moved to Yorkshire, Cheshire, Nottingham, Manchester, London and then Brighton.

What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?

London is working hard to earn the number 2 spot on the map for tech businesses behind Silicon Valley, not least through the work of Tech London Advocates.

London is a forward thinking, multi cultural place, just like our company. However, as I write this on the dawn of the BREXIT result it seems like an island compared to the rest of the UK and tech skills and services may be all we have left to export!

Explain why your company is a MadTech company, and how you plan to disrupt the larger ecosystem.

Every marketer relies on an up to date database to be able to market to – we believe our product at critical mass has the potential to extend to brands with users express permission to share their contact details with the brands they love. ConnectiD has a vision to organise the worlds contact information by giving people control of their own information and then syndicating it to people and brands they are happy to have access to it.

What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?

We have done 3 versions of this product web based, hybrid and now native – its taken a long time and a lot of money but we have learned a lot along the way, however, we should have failed faster!

Tell us about where you think Collider can add the most value to you over the next four months.

Help us get the positioning of our product and brand right and to help us develop our business model further alongside brands to understand what pain points they have and how ConnectiD could potentially address them.

What advice would you give to founders who are applying to accelerator programmes?

Find an accelerator that has aligned values to your company – shop around as all accelerator programmes are not made equal

Behind the Scenes: Duel

Hear the startups participating in Collider’s first Startup Booster Programme. We’re taking you behind the scenes.

Who are you and what do you do?

I am Paul Archer and I am the founder of Duel. Duel is a fully automated, AI powered tool that lets brands manage user-generated content with absolute control. They can run photo, video, GIF and idea competitions, polls and automatically post highly engaging interactive display adverts featuring the best of this content.

Where in the world are you from and what drew you to London?

I started the company in Bristol and moved to London now it has begun to scale and I need to be closed to our clients. It’s also one of, if not the most exciting cities in the world.

What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?

London has everything you need. Every company has a major office here, and it’s perfectly positioned to travel to markets all around the world. It also never stops. There’s always something amazing and interesting going on every hour of every day (and night).

Explain why your company is a MadTech company, and how you plan to disrupt the larger ecosystem.

We help brands let their customers tell their stories. Our product allows brand managers unlock the power of their audience and brings them into the conversation on a platform that is safe for the brand.

What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?

Finding product market fit. We have under taken 1 major and a number of minor pivots to get to this point. However, the learnings along the way have been completely worth it.

Tell us about where you think Collider can add the most value to you over the next four months.

I think collider will open up doors that we could previously never do. It is also a huge stamp of approval, giving us extra validation as we roll out to brands.

What advice would you give to founders who are applying to accelerator programmes?

Look at the kind of businesses that they accept and only apply to ones that are relevant to you – you could waste weeks filling in forms and wasting time when you don’t fit the mould. Then when you find one that works, through everything at it!

LivingLens grabs £1M Series A Investment

Collider Class of 2014 startup LivingLens, the leaders in making video searchable. They have just closed a £1M Series A funding round, comprised of local Angel Investors in the MadTech space. We had the chance to sit down with Carl Wong, Co-Founder of LivingLens, for an exclusive look at what it’s like to go through the process of raising a Series A round. From scaling sales and client offerings, to in-sourcing technology, to partnerships (LivingLens also just announced a partnership with Market Logic), Carl shares his thoughts on leadership vs. management, creating relationships with Investors, milestones and being resilient.

Co-Founder, Carl Wong

Tell us about the journey of starting in Liverpool, and having clients in London. What are a couple of the drawbacks and highlights?

CW: It’s an interesting question because it’s a non-question. As long as you are in London frequently and often, clients see that you are, you make little to no barriers, more so than anybody else because you set when you can and can’t meet. There are no drawbacks, you just need to make sure you’re consistently there, week-in and week-out. In terms of the positives, well I have probably a better work/life balance than most people. We have a really strong tech skill base in Liverpool that’s probably available at considerably cost-cheaper. And I'm able to leverage my local networks as well as my London networks. There’s no real downside to it.

How did you choose your investors for this round and how long did it take? Are they all from the UK? Was the funding journey what you anticipated?

CW: Our investors in this round are those that have been active and are well funded from our earlier small round last year, and indeed some from the original Collider round. They were engaged from the start with the idea that what we’re trying to do with the business. They have the resources to support us to this level of scale, and indeed beyond, hopefully if required. And, the journey took much longer than anticipated. I think everyone will probably say that, who has been through a similar exercise.

Because we were already engaged with them, because they already understood our business to an extent, my ambition was that the round would take maybe 3 months from the very initial conversation, to landing commitments to the paperwork. And it’s taken twice that. And it’s probably taken not just twice the elapsed time, but twice the amount of actual time and energy. The funding for this round has largely come from the UK, but we do have US investment from the previous small round last year, and indeed they are very active in the advisory capacity with us.

READ ALSO: THE 10 COLLIDER STARTUPS HEADING TO CANNES

How will you spend the money you've raised for this round? How will your strategy change, and where do you see LivingLens going?

CW: The money is going in to two significant areas. One is building a client servicing, sales and account development function. Which we've already started with two brilliant hires and will continue to build that team out specifically to enable, not just revenue, but more importantly to enable us to deliver value to clients. That comes back to the fact that LivingLens is cutting edge technology. We’re in a very embryonic industry of video mining which I believe will explode over the course of the next couple of years. And we’re going to be at the forefront of that.

LivingLens is about getting the most from video anywhere, so in terms of where we’re going to go as a business, at the moment, we make an organisation’s video searchable, and we take video from anywhere, from any of their partner agencies, and we capture it ourselves. The future is widening up those inputs even further to include social media video. And then the outputs – about delivering more and more valuable analytics around the aggregation of that video, and individual moments of it. And working with partners in the ecosystem, an API driven ecosystem to drive more and more value in the proposition.

The second area where the money will be invested is the technology. We’re taking great strides this year to basically in-source all of our technology build. We have an excellent engineering team of permanent staff, supplemented by contractors when necessary, to accelerate our roadmap, which is all about driving specific value for clients where we continue to build that out. As you know, great tech staff, great engineers are very much in demand. And are expensive. Can’t wait!

What’s your next milestone?

CW: Our next key milestones, since the announcement of the money happened quite recently, but we've been planning for it for some time. So it’s about key hires, putting the right team in place, the team is everything for us. It’s about converting some of our clients into longer-term, higher value, contracted basis. And we are in negotiations with two very very large contracts at the moment. And probably taking that first psychological big step forward to £1M in revenue.

What personal development have you done to adjust your leadership and management style to reflect your company growth, if any?

CW: That’s a good question. I would say, not just recently, but over the course of the last 18 months, you've got to remain focused. It’s really easy to take all of this excellent advice experts are sharing with you, and your head will be spinning. So you've got strike that real balance between listening and considering hard, while staying focused. And I think I've become a better listener.

In terms of leadership style, the interesting thing there is going from a 2-man team, to a 4-man team, to now a 10-man team since we’re bigger. There’s a balance that’s shifted I’d say over the course of the last few months and further as we go forward, from management to leadership. Management about helping individuals’ micro-manage their to-do lists, prioritising what’s happening on a day-to-day, and week-to-week basis. And delivering that on time and in instances budget.

And now, it’s more about engaging people in the vision, setting the tone, giving people enough responsibility to feel they can make their own decisions. And that’s because weave been able to build out the team with brilliant people. People who are much better at their job than I am at mine. So that’s really exciting and very rewarding. But day by day, it’s quite challenging, and I'm always learning. I've learned more in the past 18 months than I have in the past 18 years anyways.

What advice would you give to entrepreneurs in the MadTech space who are looking to raise a similar round to you?

CW: Work it, it’s all about using your time well, by getting out there and making connections. Hone that pitch, there’s no such thing as being too practised. That’s a massive learning point for me entering this space 18 months ago. I thought I was good at presenting. I was average. You've got to be really tight about what you’re pitching. The value of it, the problem you’re solving. My best advice is to keep working it.

Be very very resilient. You’re going to hear lots of no’s. And it’s not because your idea isn't awesome. Some people just don’t get it. Some people just don’t engage with it. It’s not their space. Just keep working very very hard to make connections. And then follow up and follow up and follow up. Be relentless in that, because it’s going to take much more time and effort and many more no’s than you expect. Just keep at it.

Collider12 Alumnus Avocarrot raises $2M

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We’ve got big news from the US – Collider12 alumnus Avocarrot have just closed a $2M seed round! We’re so happy for the guys, who moved to San Francisco after participating in the first Collider programme in London. Their round is made up of investors Giorgos Zacharia, Darling Ventures, Odyssey Ventures L.P. After an exclusive VentureBeat article provided some insights into the native mobile ad space, we had the chance to get down to the details with Co-Founder Conno Christou. Read on for some insights into working across the pond, raising funding, and the challenges of running a multi-national company from Conno.

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•         What were some of the struggles and opportunities you faced when moving to SF?

The biggest struggle is to find a way to network and get out the word for the company to a totally new audience in a new environment with brutal competition and noise. There’s not a standard recipe to succeed on this, however the 3 tips from me would be to try and keep your confidence levels high at all costs, to listen carefully even if you don’t necessarily agree and to be as specific as possible when asking for favours.

If you re a first timer and you'll learn by doing, then by definition you'll make a lot of mistakes that will seem silly to you after a while. The large abundance of potential clients, partners and investors in Silicon Valley will help you accelerate this learning process to nail your pitch and understand better the mechanics of the game. Remember to listen carefully to what everybody has to say.

•         This is a big seed round of funding. How will you manage the money and how far are you expecting it to take you?

In Europe this might be one of the biggest seed rounds so far, however in Silicon Valley it is rather the norm. A general rule of thumb is that you get the money for 12-18 months runway. In our case, we'll mostly invest in expanding the team with exceptional people both in SF and Europe, while at the same time market the ad exchange to both app developers and demand sources.

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•         How did you choose your investors for this round and how long did it take? Was it what you anticipated?

It was much worse than we thought - both in terms of time and resources but also in terms of energy consumption and expectations. The VC game in SV is extremely different compared to Europe and the time to adapt to the new rules might be underestimated. A VC once told me that bad fundraising looks like a 100 no’s and a successful one like 99 no’s. As you see, continuous rejections are part of the process, which at some point makes you question your own credibility and value, resulting to low confidence. Remember that if you lose your confidence then you lose the game.

•         You have some of your team based in Greece and others in SF with visits back and forth to London. What are some of the highlights and pitfalls of running an international company?

You get to see lots of different people and replicate processes to create a quick buzz in new territories, given that you know what you re doing. The challenge is that you have to be disciplined and systematic on how to maintain excellent communication bridges between the distributed teams. A catalyst here is to create strong, well-defined processes and find ways to enforce them so that the team embraces them and doesn't reject them.

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•         What advice would you give to entrepreneurs in the MadTech space who are looking to raise a similar round to you?

The mobile adtech space is a huge space that is kind of doomed and blessed at the same time. Doomed because there s a lot of noise and few successes; blessed because unlike the web adtech landscape, there are no dominant players in the mobile space yet, so there s a huge opportunity to be amongst the first ones.

If you re looking to get money, then start meeting with VCs at least a month earlier to start getting to know them under no time pressure. If you have a rockstar team and a strong vision then you have pretty good chances to secure a seed round. If you manage to report steep hockey sticks in your KPI graphs then you have great chances for a big seed. Don’t give up and stay confident. 99 no’s is the norm..

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